Secret Life of the American Teenager: Season 3 Episode 26 - ...Or Not to Be

All I can say is wow.

Wow.

I just caught up on this episode today - I always watch them online at abcfamily.com, and they don't become available until the following day - and I am totally speechless.

Well, not speechless, because here I am blogging about it.

**Warning: Spoilers**


I legitimately cried during this episode. I could see where it was going from pretty early on (not because I'm psychic or anything ;) You know how you can just tell when something's coming?! I just knew) but I was still in denial - they had to be making it seem worse than what it was... right?! But if it was going where I thought it might be going, I really didn't think I'd cry. There was a time when merely the suggestion of a dead baby resulted in automatic waterworks.. but not really anymore. I save my tears for special occasions now. So I was totally, totally shocked. Secret Life is so often cheesy and unrealistic, but to me the acting in this episode was so raw and real, I couldn't help but cry.

I totally saw myself in Adrian (and Ben a little bit, too). Especially in the scene where Tom calls Adrienne and she says she can't talk - and the look on her face, and the sound of her voice is just dead and emotionless. You're so tired, you're so numb, you just go on autopilot:

Screenshot taken from the abcfamily.com Total Access Player.

It was so weird but just watching her... just relived the exhaustion, the disbelief, the feeling that this cannot possibly be real.

And then an instant later, she hangs up her phone, looks up at Ben, and her eyes immediately start to well up with tears: 

Screenshot taken from the abcfamily.com Total Access Player

and she bursts out sobbing. All. Too. Familiar. Feeling like you have no tears left and then suddenly it hits you again.

Screenshot taken from the abcfamily.com Total Access Player

You can totally just feel her pain. She's so heartbroken. Then Ben comforts her - and I remember that feeling too. Sobbing those deep sobs that wrack your entire body, and having someone comfort you. You feel their warmth but you still feel so alone, and so cold. I remember feeling so cold all the time after B died. Literally and figuratively.

I just can't say enough how great I thought the acting was in this episode. Mainly Ben and Adrian, but everyone else, too. How helpless Ben and Adrian's parents felt - I remember seeing those exact looks on the faces of my family and friends. People try to be there for you and they don't know how - they just look bewildered and pitying. 

There were a few things about the episode that I was disappointed about: 

I wish they would have focused more on the stillbirth.. the fact that Adrian still had to go through the birthing process even when she knew her baby was dead. I can't even imagine having to do that, and that is (in my opinion) a huge differentiating factor between a stillbirth and an earlier miscarriage or a neonatal loss. 

Along the same lines, I wish they would have shown the baby. I know I'm dark and twisty like that, and probably 99% of people would have been horrified if they had. It could have just looked like a sleeping baby... nothing gory, of course... but it would have been nice to see Ben and Adrian getting to hold her. Even if they just showed a swaddled blanket and not shown the baby per se. And seriously? They didn't call anyone until it was all over and done with?! Really?! It would have been awesome for everyone to have been rallying around Adrian when she had to give birth. I see the statement that they're making - that Ben and Adrian clung to each other through it - but it seems unrealistic to me. Most people would call the people they're close to as soon as they found out something was wrong.

All in all though, I thought this was an amazing episode. I don't usually blog about television shows but this was a must. I can't wait to see next week's episode, and how Ben and Adrian deal with the grief of being babylost :(